The idea of the primitive is another key element when discussing the art of Joaquín Torres García. It is frequently brought up in order to rehash the notions of place and identity that are tied up to writings on Torres´ Montevideo period and the foundation of Universalismo Constructivo as a regionalist enterprise that not many people, at least not in Uruguay, cared about. In “Montevideo: Constructive Universalism”, Cecilia de Torres states that “Tal vez fue algo insólita la idea de escoger a la capital uruguaya como punto de lanzamiento de un proyecto cuyo fin fuera la unificación cultural de América. A diferencia de las grandes ciudades del Perú o de México, Montevideo- la capital más austral del continente- no fue construida sobre las ruinas de civilizaciones anteriores. Para principios del siglo XIX la colonización europea ya había disuelto y casi exterminado las tribus nómadas indígenas de la region, en particular los Charrúa y los Chaná” (223), later on she states that “(Torres) no logró interesar a los artistas uruguayos en este proyecto: el arte amerindio les resultaba extranjero y ajeno a su campo de interés” (226).

This interest in Torres having chosen an awkward place to establish a movement that theoretically depended on pre-Columbian art, (even though Montevideo was his native city and he had already travelled to many other places), was already present in the 1930s and 40s; over the years, the use of the pre-Columbian as well as the fact that it came from Montevideo have been discussed and regarded as positive attributes that speaks to the hype, relevance and legitimacy of Universalismo Constructivo. The Uruguayan author Juan Carlos Onetti, who befriended Torres as a young man, helped to establish this trend when he talked about all of this in one of his journalistic pieces: “Váyase a Perú, a México, a Guatemala” places where there is an interest in the pre-Columbian, he would say to Torres, but the older and wiser artist would reply “que justamente le interesaba el Uruguay, Montevideo, porque no teníamos un pasado de civilización india…. Buscaba hacer surgir de la nada un arte nuevo que tal vez tuviera siglos de edad”. Onetti suggests that in Torres something modern could pass as an antiquity, and that it would be possible to invent, as in alternate history (or as in fiction like the one Onetti wrote around the made-up city of Santa María), a narrative of the Charrúas as an important pre-Columbian Civilization.

I have already discussed the thought that Torres was able to steer away from narrative but it comes back here in terms of his use of primitivism: “al liberar el arte de su papel mimetico, (Torres) permitió que los artistas evadieran la trampa narrativa o descriptiva indigenista” (132) says Mari Carmen Ramírez in one of her essays on La Escuela del Sur.

Overall, there is a notion that the relationship between Universalismo Constructivo and pre-Columbian art is fruitful, balanced, with no annoying side effects of what Torres called “pastiche sudamericano”, and Cecilia de Torres sums up as “los peligros del criollismo y el folclorismo folclórico” (226).

Juan Fló is less optimistic about this relationship. He sees a blatant contradiction, not within the work, but between Torres the painter and Torres the promoter of his own art. On the last footnote of his “Torres-García in (and from) Montevideo”, Fló states that “The influence of pre-Columbian art on Torres-García is irrelevant. Indo-American art, like all primitive arts and the art of great ancient cultures, interested him inasmuch as it formed part of the paradigm of an art with an extra-aesthetic meaning not bound to imitative representation” (43). Fló goes on to say that there are few actual examples, and dubious ones, in Torres´ artwork that can be unequivocally related to Indo-America; while his writings are full of the desire to claim the Indo-American influence. Even though other writers mention that Uruguayans cared little about the pre-Columbian, Fló believes that Torres used the idea in order to persuade them, in order to attract attention.

Luis Camnitzer, another important Uruguayan artist and writer, also sees the contradiction but takes the other side. In one of his essays he suggests that in the case of Torres the act of painting interfered with his ideological project.

I feel the painter and the promoter should be reunited, not divided. Meshed up until you can’t tell whether Torres was a writer or a painter, whether Universalismo Constructivo was of Latin American or European origin, produced by a skilful arts and crafts movement or sold as mass-produced “artesanías”, primitive in naïve, folkloric terms or profound ones.

Camnitzer, Luis, edited by Rachel Weiss. (2009). On art, artists, Latin America, and other utopias. Austin: University of Texas Press.

In a text from 1991, Cecilia de Torres defined Universalismo Constructivo in the following terms: “By inserting a symbol representing humanistic value into the antithetical rational structure of neo-plasticism (which was devoid of human references), Torres-García succeeded in creating a style that constituted a major contribution to modern art. He called it Constructive Universalism” (Buzio de Torres, 7). More than fifteen years later in another text she states her definition in these terms: “Al colocar símbolos dentro de una estructura geométrica, (Torres) pudo expresar un significado carente de narrativa. A este estilo lo nombró Universalismo Constructivo” (de Torres, 227).

In the first of these, I can identify that desire which appears in other publications of the 1980s and 1990s, a desire to assign uniqueness and relevance to the work of the Uruguayan painter. The second definition evaluates the avant-garde in positive terms, specifically addressing how abstract art purposefully challenged figurative art by refusing to tell stories.

Both definitions share the idea of a combination of two elements, which has typically been attributed to Universalismo Constructivo. From the start of her 1985 essay on Torres, Margit Rowell had already announced that “En términos más explícitos, las referencias combinadas a la abstracción geométrica europea y el arte prehistórico o precolombino constituyen la verdadera significación de(l) constructivismo universal” (7). This idea of combination, however, seems more like a not very convincing game of oppositions: Europe vs. pre-Columbian, modern vs. prehistoric, meaning vs. narrative, human vs. machine. And it isn’t convincing because the idea of a combination between two elements doesn’t hold up as a definition for Universalismo Constructivo.

Some, not all, of Torres´ late work relies on the combination of symbols and geometric abstraction, and these don’t necessarily oppose each other; plus, the notion that the symbols, because they are placed on a geometric structure, effectively produce meaning without narrative is highly questionable. This type of logical equation may be misplaced in art criticism. And what is meaning without narrative? What sort of meaning is supposed to come out from elements that appear to be opposite to each other?

Cecilia de Torres may be referring to what Torres García considered an intuitive approach to art. The ability to “read” or “interpret” the symbols and the geometric shapes on some of his famous paintings and sculptures, not as a tale, not as an illustration of reality, not as a statement, but as something else: free floating ideas, sensations, hunches related to, but not limited to themes such as measure, labour, love, health… In this sense, both elements, not just the symbols, can be seen as “humanistic”, because both trigger this free flowing mental process.

But there are more than two elements, and sometimes there is only one. Some paintings by Torres show stonewall-like grids with no symbols on them, but they still form part of Universalismo Constructivo. And on the pages of his books, there are illustrations in which the grid is absent and only the symbols appear; and it’s still Universalismo Constructivo. His writings too, which span from art theory to fiction to lyric essay, play a piece in the movement; and even more, there are words that appear on paintings, like MONTEVIDEO, ARTE, SIGLO XX. Are these to be seen merely as symbols? As geometric shapes? How does the word MONTEVIDEO resist narration?

As interesting as it sounds, the lack of narration attributed to Torres doesn’t hold up either. Inevitably, narratives for Universalismo Contructivo have already been described/invented. One is that of Latin American insubordination, another is that of the modernist voyage back and from the centre to the peripheries. We cannot undo them, only challenge them… with more narratives. New readings of Universalismo Constructivo could present the narrative of longevity and health, for instance. Torres and other members of Universalismo Constructivo laid out these narratives and others; and most of all, they created an immense and varied body of work, a source of power, a community, that cannot be settled with one definition, and whose shape is not unlike a labyrinth.

Going back to Cecilia de Torres´ second definition, one might consider inverting the idea that Torres expresses meaning without narrative; maybe it’s narrative without meaning.

Buzio de Torres, Cecilia. (1991) “The School of the South: The Asociación de Arte Constructivo, 1934-1942” in Buzio de Torres, Cecilia and Mari Carmen Ramírez The School of the South: Taller Torres-García and its legacy Austin: University of Austin Press.

de Torres, Cecilia. (2007). “Montevideo: Constructive Universalism” in Pérez-Barreiro, editor. The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection. Austin: Blanton Museum of Art (University of Texas) and Fundación Cisneros.

In the conclusion of his article “Torres-García in (and from) Montevideo” Juan Fló mentions that “from very early times in Latin America there was a consciousness of the problematic situation of culture on that continent”; and that one response to this problem was in the form of exalting indigenous or creole cultures, while another, “at the other extreme -Jorge Luis Borges is probably the most conspicuous proponent of this thesis- was defending our colonial position far from the cultural centres as a privilege” (39). Fló sees Torres´ utopianism falling somewhere around these standard responses, in a place of its own; and its failure, because Fló believes that Torres ultimately failed, is partly due to the constitution of Uruguay, to how its people were not ready to fully receive the ideas brought along by the old master: “It was, and still is” says Fló, “an alluvial society, imbued with a certain amount of unimaginative common sense that is strictly opposed to any kind of excess, convinced of its own superiority, Europeanized by race and by culture, in the midst of a backward mestizo continent…” (39).

It is not necessary anymore, seductive as it may seem, to rant about our mediocrity in order to elevate our esteemed heroes; nor should one have to address the work of a Latin American artist in terms of how he or she dealt with the problems of culture in Latin America. I could give importance to that issue, just as I could focus on another. The work of Borges himself is full of examples that easily engage with the principles of Torres´ “Universalismo”. It is not a coincidence that his first collection of short stories, from 1935, is entitled “Historia Universal de la Infamia”. This cry for universality affected most avant-garde movements at some point or other during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Mysticism, symbolism and geometry, also preoccupied Borges. One quick example of how he and Torres might merge comes from the 1942 detective story “La muerte y la brújula”, in which the Argentinean seems to be loosely referencing the concept of the golden section that fascinated Torres. The very first lesson of his 1944 book Universalismo Constructivo: “La liberación del artista”(originally written 10 years earlier) is dedicated to this issue. The Uruguayan defines the golden mean as a line in which C= A+B when A is to B as B is to C. At the end of Borges´ short story, Lönnrot speaks to his rival about a labyrinth that consists of only one straight line: “cuando en otro avatar usted me dé caza, finja (o cometa) un crimen en A, luego un segundo crimen en B, a 8 kilómetros de A y B, a mitad de camino entre los dos. Aguárdeme después en D, a 2 kilómetros de A y C, de nuevo a mitad de camino” (172).

Torres was fascinated by geometry and yet often seems a little rough in his approach to it. Calculating “a ojo de buen cubero” instead of with a straightedge ruler. Borges´ detective stories weren’t by the book either. A character in “Abenjacán, el Bojarí, muerto en su laberinto” feels that “la solución del misterio siempre es inferior al misterio” (162). Borges seems close to Torres when the focus is not on discussing the problematic situation of Latin American culture. They both explore hybrid forms, they challenge the genres and defy the geometry that they pursue.

Is it “nuestro norte es el sur-realismo”? Are the inverted maps one of the surrealist gestures we can find in the work of Torres (the basis of Universalismo Constructivo movement was “juntar, en un haz, al cubismo, el neo-plasticismo y el super-realismo”)? Closer, maybe to that brand of Surrealism which some critics, like David Hopkins, see as “paradoxically” highly intelligent, calculated, political? Or was it maybe a more anarchic, made-to-shock, Dadaist gesture?

In a conference from 1941, Torres refers to Surrealism and Dadaism as being the same thing (Hopkins, in 2004 writes a whole book trying to get at how they are not); he says: “Pues bien, caduco el cubismo, fue asimiliado por el super-realismo (o dadaísmo); y hoy no existe más que éste como movimiento serio de vanguardia.” Is it necessary that today we attempt to differentiate, or emphasize the differences between Dadaism and Surrealism (and the differences within each movements as well)? Between them and Universalismo Constructivo? There are differences, obvious ones, but the three movements also have so much in common.

In the case of the inverted maps, for instance, the literal reading, which sees them as instruments of a subversive strategy, is a way of ignoring or avoiding the fact that turning things around, putting them on their head, was and is a big part of art. Towards the end of the 1920´s George Bataille wrote a famous text about “The Big Toe” in which “he argues (that) man considers the toe… to be something base and ignoble… (he) therefore seeks a reversal of values…” (Hopkins, 106); and in that same period “the Surrealists published a redrawn map of the world in the Belgian Surrealist magazine Variétés. On the map France and the USA were completely absent and Polynesia, Mexico and Alaska assumed gigantic importance” (Hopkins 132). Is this physiological reversal or this erasing of the empires (although Alaska is technically part of the USA) to be differentiated with Torres´ drawing (in which the coordinates of Montevideo are highlighted)?

In this sense, Achugar comes closest to providing a more open reading when he suggests that the maps have something to do with the verses from Altazor by Vicente Huidobro: “Los cuatro puntos cardenales son tres: el sur y el norte”, Achugar asserts that Huidobro “ya había señalado la arbitrariedad de la localización geográfica” (210); but then he sort of takes it backs and reverts to Fló´s old interpretation about breaking with European tradition, starting anew from America: “…en a formulación de JTG existe todo un programa de política de la representación que intenta desmontar el poder tradicional de la representación artística producida desde el Norte” (210).

Achugar´s text adds another interesting interpretation, that of Paul Vandenbroeck who found similarities between the maps and a sketch of the world in one of the works by Guaman Poma de Ayala. But this too, on second thought, is loaded with the idea of insubordination, which, since the time of the colony, is quite common in Latin America.

What I am trying to say is that Torres was as insubordinate as Bataille or Magritte or Breton, and not more radically so because he happened to be in Uruguay, Latin America. I am also trying to say that even though it may be important to know how to tell apart a Surrealist gesture from a Dadaist one (Paris Dada Or Berlin Dada? Cologne Dada, New York Dada?) and from a Universalista Constructivo one, it is impossible to forget why we study them together. Impossible to ignore that they are brought together because we study them.

Hopkins, David. (2004). Dada and Surrealism: A very short Introduction Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The images by Torres that most directly address the theme of Uruguay’s place in the world are his famous “inverted maps”. Torres drew two of them, in 1936 and in 1943, but again, the writings about these images are often too literal and stick too closely to what certain texts by Torres himself declare.

Giunta, for example, says that: “El acto de inversión implica una re-ubicación de fundamento ideológico, marca una nueva etapa que se propone como independiente para el arte latinoamericano” (296). In the second part of that sentence, she is echoing the idea that Torres and his movement in Uruguay were set to create a new form of art for the new continent. But this is one of the least interesting things Torres has to say about art. Of course he wanted to be independent/free of influences/original. So did most modernist artists at the time; but their manifestoes, most of them, read today fail to transmit the urgency they are believed to have once possessed.

The idea of art gaining its independence has more correctly been associated to a subject matter, like regarding the period in history when professional artists in the Western tradition were mostly producing allegorical Christian art; and also to formal aspects of the work of art, like when Western conceptual art “broke free” from the materiality of painting and sculpture; but with regards to geographical influences it becomes harder to fully articulate how the limitations of “dependence” operate (themes, form, styles, techniques, cultural politics of isolationism?) and therefore how the ideal of independence would come about. How can you fully undo something that has already been done?

As a start to producing another way of writing about the inverted maps, I would like to point out two elements of analysis. The first is that, unlike the majority of Torres´ paintings, which combine illustration and painting techniques, the maps are mere drawings, solely illustrational and belong to a separate category of the ouvre they tend to overshadow. To add to this, I could say that the maps have been interpreted as insurrectional/insubordinate, precisely because the mode of illustration is more prone to telling stories than painting is; and it is easier to interpret illustration in a literal way.

The second element has to do with the influence of surrealism in Torres. The inverted maps could be interpreted along the same lines as Magritte’s famous “Ceci n´est pas une pipe”, in the sense that they both twist or invert something that is traditionally held to be true the other way around. There would be no implicit geo-political interpretation available in this case, just a challenge on knowledge in general. (Building upon this surrealist interpretation, I could even add a more outlandish one that sees the maps not as geographically inverted but as erect, in the sense that South America has its phallus shaped end upwards. In this case, Torres would appear to be closer to penetration than he is to liberation).

Writing about Torres´ last years in Montevideo has involved two themes that are combined and made to tell a story. The first is the theme of the hero’s return. The other is the theme of the culturally underdeveloped, the provincial, the periphery. Andrea Giunta seems to believe the hero fulfilled his mission, or at least succeeded in giving shape to his “aspiraciones de hacer un arte anónimo, popular, monumental, metafísico, ritual” (298); while Fló, telling more or less the same story, reaches a less optimistic conclusion: Torres as the “best possible substitute for the tradition and the museums, that we do not possess” (41). But, of course neither Fló nor Giunta made up the story they are telling. Their 1990´s articles, which were written as responses to a certain downplaying of Torres´ “latinamericanism” (such as in Margit Rowell’s article), recap what was already present in Torres´ day and was a big part of his own strategy upon arrival in Montevideo.

The second stage of the magazine Círculo y Cuadrado (Cercle et Carré), which Torres and his students launched in May 1936, is dedicated almost entirely to this topic. In countless articles, members of the “Asociación de Arte Constructiva” praise and salute the return of Torres, while in others, their writings complain or wish for, in the words of Carmelo de Arzadun,: “las ciudades donde el Arte existe realmente y tiene vida propia”. But it’s also interesting to find Parisians, like Jean Hélion, writing as a sort of foreign correspondent, also complaining about his own, more cosmopolitan, scene (my translation): “with the exception of a great exhibition in Switzerland, there’s not been much happening in Paris this winter”, and further on, “there aren’t any interesting young painters”.

The first articles in the first issue of Círculo y Cuadrado written by Torres, in Spanish and then in French, start this particular trend within the magazine. In one, the artist talks about the experience in Europe and lays out some of the objectives for the second “época” of the magazine. The opening lines are a testimony that challenges, again, that rich European cultural scene defended by Rowell because it shows that it included (obviously) not so enriching personal feuds and bickering amongst artists and their public. Torres says he visited a Dalí exhibit on the rue la Seine “y fue tanto lo que me desagradó, que luego, en esa misma tarde, hablando con Van Doesburg, se lo dije, añadiendo que había que hacer algo en sentido opuesto”. But he couldn’t reach an agreement with Van Doesburg either: “porque para decirlo en una palabra, él no admitía otra expression de arte, que el puramente abstracto… No siendo este mi criterio…”. When the magazine, minus Van Doesburg, is finally launched and a “constructivists” exhibition organized, they obtained mixed reviews: “despertaron opiniones en la crítica y en el público, muy contradictorias”.

In a second article from the first issue Torres positively reviews a local exhibition on pre-columbian art that included a cycle of conferences by ethnographer Rafael Fosalba (this contradicts Rowell´s statement about nobody being interested in Indian culture), and yet Torres worries: “tememos que tan extraordinaria colección quede… en el olvido, debido a nuestro escaso ambiente para estas cosas”.

A final example on the scanty cultural atmosphere of Montevideo, as depicted by Círculo y Cuadrado, comes from the artist Héctor Ragni who gives an autobiographical account on “Porque pertenezco a la Asociación de Arte Constructivo”. In it he states that until Torres´ return in 1934 he had spent seven years without one single brushstroke “por creer que aquí no se planteaba el verdadero problema del Arte o se dejaba de lado, produciendo sin inquietudes nada más que lo indispensable para dar señales de vida”. But then, strangely (or maybe not), he also says that in his last visit to Paris, in 1926, “pude anotar en mi diario mi impresión desfavorable hacia la mayoría de pintura que se exponía en los salones y exposiciones particulares”

What all of these writings from the first Uruguayan issue of Círculo y Cuadrado entail, is not a question of periphery vs. centre but, basically, an anti-art stance, a disbelief that art is “for real”; the same stance that is continually being picked up by art criticism and plain “talking about art” towards the end of the twentieth century and even today. But maybe it isn’t an anti-art stance but just the basics of any form of criticism; possibly, we might find examples of this type of complaining about culture, its conditions, etc. in writings by or about Juan Manuel Blanes, painting historical realism in Uruguay during the second half of the 19th century.

The purpose of my study on Torres is not to produce a milder version of the artist nor to reconcile him with the cultural scene in Montevideo, but, at least for now, I wish to point out that highlighting the stories about the lack of culture there (even if Torres himself insisted upon this) or about the great impact of his return, fails to address what his work is about.

Many essays on Joaquin Torres Garcia begin by mentioning his return to Montevideo, after an absence of 43 years, as a decisive, key moment in the life and career of the artist. I do the same, but, hopefully, in order to suggest that art criticism strongly linked to biography (and a questionable sense of patriotism or regionalism) can undermine itself.

The topic of Torres´ return to his native country, has unnecessarily been equated with watershed, rebirth and meaning. Juan Fló, for example, says that the final period in Montevideo is “not only significant in itself but offers clues that help us understand or reread his entire career” (177). In another essay, Andrea Giunta echoes this claim and, perhaps, takes it one step further by stating: “solo en Montevideo puede realizar su proyecto originario” (298). But a certain fascination with the topic is even present when the opposite is held, such as in Margit Rowell´s essay on Torres. She somewhat disregards the period that began in 1934, claiming that when the artist returned “pintó poco” (77), and that “el ímpetu inicial lo había encontrado en Europa no en su tierra” (41). But this focus on the works from the pre-1934 period, valid as it may be, does not stop Rowell from presenting a subtext on the condition of Uruguay. Parts of her essay needlessly argue in favour of European supremacy in the arts. “En París (Torres García) había conocido el arte más vanguardista de Europa y había adquirido unas nociones bastante amplias de arte primitivo. En Uruguay, en 1934, a nadie le importaban las culturas indias” (41); and later on, “(en Montevideo) la mayor parte de los estilos artísticos eran importados, y… el concepto de abstracción era prácticamente nulo” (77).

With regard to their view of Montevideo, the articles by Fló and Giunta don´t seem so different than that of Rowell anymore. They also refer to Uruguay as a void; they linger on the cultural backwardness, the lack of interest in art and on the lack of Indians (an idea which has also become central when writing about Torres).

Although I agree that Torres probably didn’t find a sound cultural panorama upon arrival in Montevideo, I also have trouble believing that he had found this in Paris, or in New York; or else he might have stayed in one of these places. His voyage is not about going from periphery to centre and back as we are pushed to believe by these articles. The ideas of centre and periphery are misplaced here in the discussion of an artist’s work.

The claim that Torres only finally bloomed after returning to Montevideo, attractive as it might seem, is also out of position, especially when it serves as a decoy for defending the validity of Latin American cultural production. Giunta´s writings on Brazilian Modernism, Torres-García and Wilfredo Lam are about proving Latin American insubordination and appropriation of European language (her essay on the Italian-Argentinean artist Lucio Fontana is also about highlighting the importance of his period spent in Argentina during the 1940´s). But these claims are never accurate.

And yet we cannot ignore that they come from somewhere. In an essay from 2004, Uruguayan writer Hugo Achugar says that he aspires “a que se entienda el lugar desde donde hablo. Un lugar que no es concreto y que a veces llamo periferia, otras Montevideo, Uruguay, América Latina, margen, no lugar, frontera: el lugar del desplazado, del dislocado… menos dramático que… otros… pero que sin embargo comparte la experiencia de la herida o de la humillación o del desprecio” (16). For now, I will hold the fragment referring to a place that is not concrete, and try to apply that to the story of Torres´ return after 43 years of absence.

Fló, Juan (1991), “Torres Garcia in (and from) Montevideo” in Buzio de Torres, Cecilia and Mari Carmen Ramírez The School of the South: Taller Torres-García and its legacy Austin: University of Austin Press.